Author: Mark Linville

It’s that time of the year again! Time to cook your favorite homemade meals and spend some time with friends and family. As always, gifts will be part of your Christmas celebration. Santa will also be paying a visit soon, so besides for leaving him cookies and milk, you’ll want to clean out your chimney before his arrival. After all, leaving Santa a dirty chimney to climb down might just land you on the naughty list! It would ruin his suit and his white beard will be black with soot by the time he gets down. Santa is busy on Christmas Eve, he can’t go home and take a shower to clean off soot after visiting every house.

But when it comes to taking care of your chimney, coal in your stocking and landing on the naughty list should be the least of your concerns. Keeping Santa happy isn’t the best reason to have your chimney cleaned this winter.

Why Clean A Chimney?

Unlike other parts of your house, cleaning your chimney isn’t something you do so it will look nice. You won’t really be able to see the difference after your chimney has been cleaned. Not unless you actually look up or down your chimney, at least. Sweeping a chimney is a safety precaution to avoid a chimney fire from starting in your house.

Many homeowners neglect having their chimney inspected and cleaned annually. Unfortunately, many of those homeowners end up paying dearly. There’s no way of knowing what a chimney fire would cost you if one were to start in your house. At the very best, it would cost a few thousand dollars. At the worst, it might cost your life.

Fire is a dangerous thing to work with, so if you use your chimney in the winter (even if it’s only a few times) you should have it inspected and cleaned out once a year. There are a few reasons why a neglected chimney can be very dangerous:

• Soot buildup, birds’ nests and other debris could be hiding in your chimney. If it isn’t removed it could easily catch fire. Even when extinguished as soon as possible, these fires tend to cause a lot of damage. The worst cases are when entire houses burn down and people lose their lives.
• Certain aspects of your chimney, like its height, might not meet local safety regulations. If you’ve never had your chimney inspected, you could find out that it’s been a safety hazard all along.
• When your chimney isn’t clean, it could leak carbon monoxide into your home. Carbon monoxide is a gas fires release as they burn. Because carbon monoxide has a similar molecular structure to carbon dioxide – which is an abundant gas you breathe in all the time – your red blood cells can bond with carbon monoxide molecules . The problem is that, unlike carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide is poisonous and too much carbon monoxide buildup in your blood is fatal.

While you might think your chimney is safe, it’s important to realize that carbon monoxide (much like carbon dioxide) is an invisible, odorless gas. This means you won’t be able to see or smell if your chimney is leaking this poisonous substance into your house. If your chimney is leaking any smoke into your home, that’s certainly a red flag. You should have your chimney inspected, cleaned and perhaps even fixed before using it again.

But even if your chimney isn’t leaking smoke, there could still be carbon monoxide released into your home from your fireplace. Symptoms of mild carbon monoxide poisoning include dizziness, headache and weakness. If you often feel somewhat light-headed after adding wood to your fireplace that could be a sign that your chimney is leaking carbon monoxide. And while carbon monoxide in small amounts isn’t fatal, it’s still damaging to your health.

And when it comes to carbon monoxide, it doesn’t matter what you burn in your fireplace. The gas is released even from your car exhaust. So not matter what kind of chimney you have, it has to be regularly inspected.

Furthermore, a chimney that leaks carbon monoxide is likely to have obstructions that prevent it from effectively channeling smoke out of your home. These obstructions are usually flammable, meaning it’s an early warning sign of a potential chimney fire.

Can I Sweep My Chimney Myself?

Many want to know if they can DIY their chimney inspection and cleaning. The problem is that a professional chimney sweep knows exactly what to look for. Homeowners that clean their own chimneys often leave a lot of soot and other debris, so cleaning your own chimney won’t necessarily make it any safer.

The Chimney Safety Institute of America (or CSIA), suggests you have your chimney inspected by a professional chimney sweep before you start using it for the winter. This is to ensure that any potential problems are caught and dealt with before you start making fires.

But although it’s always better to catch problems even before they can cause any harm, having your chimney inspected in the winter is also acceptable. Especially if you didn’t have your chimney checked before making your first winter fire. In that case, having it checked before making another fire is absolutely recommended. Just because your previous fires didn’t cause harm doesn’t mean your chimney will be safe for the duration of winter. On the contrary, your chimney could’ve been a ticking time bomb all along.

Please consider the safety of yourself and your family and have your chimney checked this winter. Not only will you make Santa happy, you could also be giving local firefighters the gift of a holiday season free of tragic emergencies.

Cold winter weather is back. With the return of the chilly season, you’re likely to once again use your fireplace on a regular basis for heating. Having a fireplace can supply enough heat in your home, even if you live in some of the coldest parts of the country. The good thing about heating with fire is that it’s considered to be a highly affordable alternative to electrical heating.

But even when heating with fire, there are things you should know. The kinds of wood you use can have a huge impact on both the efficiency and safety of using fire to heat your home. Better wood will prevent damage to your chimney and should give off less smoke and sparks as it burns.

Use Only Well-Seasoned Woods

Don’t ever use green woods that have not yet dried properly. Woods that aren’t well-seasoned will cause more creosote buildup in your chimney. Creosote buildup can eventually block your chimney completely.

There are a few good indicators you can use to determine the dryness of your firewood. A well seasoned wood should have all, or most, of the following properties:

• Cracks in the wood are a good indication of dryness, but shouldn’t be the only thing you check for. Green woods can have cracks while well-seasoned, dry woods can have no cracks at all.
• Splitting a piece of wood to feel whether the inside is damp is a reliable method to check if it’s ready to burn. Wood that feels even slightly damp should be left to dry out more before you use it in your fireplace.
• When the wood dries, it’ll darken from white or cream to a brownish gray or yellow depending on the kind of wood you’re using.
• Properly dried wood will sound somewhat hollow when you hit them against one another. They’ll make a hollow thump. Greener woods, however, will sound more dull when you strike two pieces together.
• Burning a piece can be a reliable way to tell if the wood is still too wet. Green wood will hiss as it burns and often makes more crackling noises than dry wood. Furthermore, dry wood will catch fire more easily than wet wood.

If you still feel unsure about how to tell if wood is ready to burn, you could invest in a wood moisture meter. Wood moisture meters are a reliable way to tell whether your wood is dry and they’re easy to use.

Stacking Your Firewood

During spring, summer and fall, you should aim to stack green firewood in a way that will allow it to dry more easily. There are a few things that’ll help the wood season more quickly.

• Don’t stack unseasoned wood too densely. It’s better to stack pieces of different sizes together so that there’s plenty of ventilation room between each piece. Stacking your firewood should be nothing like playing a game of tetris!
• Your stacks should preferably be on the smaller side. A big stack with many rows might look impressive, but if some pieces aren’t exposed to open air, your firewood will dry unevenly. Pieces closer to the center of your stack will stay wet for longer.
• Keep your stack where there’s plenty of sunshine. You want the wood to dry and prevent any mold from growing.
• Avoid stacking your firewood directly on the ground in your garden. Wood that’s dried a bit can be stored in a roofed shed that isn’t closed on every side. You need some air movement to help wood dry. Unseasoned woods stored in an unventilated area can cause mold to grow, which is a potential health hazard.

Piece Size

For the best results, the pieces of wood you burn should be about 14-18 inches long. But your preferred length will vary depending on the width of your fireplace. To make stacking a fire easier, pieces should be more or less equal in length and they shouldn’t be too long to fit properly in your fireplace.

The diameter of the pieces you use will also differ. If you want a fire that stays worm for a long time without needing to tend to it often, most of the pieces you use should be larger. Ideally, your fires should, however, consist of smaller pieces and larger pieces. Smaller pieces catch fire more easily and will burn faster than larger pieces. When measured across the widest part, the width of your pieces should vary between 3-6 inches.

Trees That Make Good Firewood

The tree species you burn for firewood will have significant impact on the way your fire burns. For fireplaces you should try to use woods that are denser. The best choices for firewood will be woods that burn hot enough to warm your house, but not so hot it damages the inside of your chimney. Good woods to burn include birch, oak, hickory, maple, ash and beech. Woods that are still good, but somewhat less good include cherry, fir and walnut.

Avoid burning chestnut, spruce and hemlock as these woods often smoke and spark a lot while burning. Soft woods, like pine, are good when you want to start a fire, but not ideal to use as fire fuel once you’ve got a fire going because they tend to smoke more than other options.

However, if you have some wood you’re unsure about, it won’t do much harm to burn some of it and check for smoke and sparks as it burns. Don’t continue using a wood as your main source of fire fuel if you find that the wood gives off too much smoke or sparks a lot.

Because it’s already winter, you won’t be able to dry woods yourself anymore. Check that any wood you buy is already well-seasoned and that the pieces are a good size. Buying wood from a good supplier is the best way to know your firewood will be of a high quality.